Tales of Trilussa Author:Carlo Alberto Salustri Translated from the Romanesco by John DuVal. — In the summer of 1887, fifteen-year-old Carlo Alberto Salustri dressed in his Sunday best, nervously but resolutely walked into the editorial office of the Romanesco newspaper, Il Rugantino, and offered the editor one handwritten sonnet. It was accepted and published under the pseudonym Trilussa, and... more » anagram of the young author's last name. Thus began a career that would last sixty-seven years.
Trilussa is indisputably the greatest poet of this century to write in Romensco, a dialect geographically centered in Trastevere, Rome "beyond the Tiber." Despite the fact that he was a dialect poet, Trilusa gained national and international recognition, becoming one of those extremely rare poets who have made a living entirely from their own work. By the time of his death in 1950 much of Trilussa's work had been translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, and Italian.
John DuVal has chosen for translation the best poems from Tutte le poesis, Trilussa's collected work. Tales of Trilussa is an introduction to the comiclyric sensibility of a poet who mocked pomposity and exposed te doubletalk of everyone from street thugs to government officials.« less